Inside the Star

Death on the Great Lakes: The 9th of November Gale

A mammoth storm a century ago sent ten ships and 250 souls to the bottom, in Canada’s forgotten nautical disaster. Reporter John Spears puts human faces to some of those lost in this gripping excerpt from the new Star Dispatches ebook, The 9th of November Gale.

It was a “white hurricane” that sunk ten freighters and took upwards of 250 lives. But the marine catastrophe of November 1913 has never worked its way into Canada’s consciousness. Reporter John Spears puts human faces to some of those lost in this excerpt from the new Star Dispatches ebook, The 9th of November Gale.

Robert Turnbull watched the storm from his farm on the Lake Huron shoreline south of Goderich. When it became clear that it was not just another autumn gale but a cataclysm for the lake freighters, he and others began patrolling the shoreline, hoping for survivors but finding only the dead.

Some sights would haunt the rescuers long afterward. One was the body of James Glenn, the young Scotsman making his last trip on the steamer Wexford before going home to bring his bride to Canada. Turnbull, the Star reported, spotted Glenn in the lake. Although stone dead, Glenn was “standing bolt upright in the water, a quarter of a mile from shore, with his frozen arms and hands raised out of the water and moving with every swell as if beckoning for help.”

Some of Glenn’s shipmates from the Wexford, which sank in Lake Huron off Goderich, had washed up the previous day, as the anonymous Star correspondent had described. “Seven seamen, their lips sealed by death, have floated ashore since Tuesday morning, each buoyed up with a Wexford lifebelt.”

What happened to the Wexford “is a matter of conjecture,” the Star correspondent wrote. “One thing, however, is clearly pointed out by the way in which the bodies are dressed. They knew the vessel was foundering, and had time to prepare. Each body is wearing a lifebelt so securely fastened that the only way to get them off was to cut them. Chief Engineer James Scott had time to think of putting on his overcoat, the only one to do so.”

Captain W.J. Bassett, managing director of the Western Steamship Company, which owned the vessel, had been up the shore to examine the Wexford’s empty lifeboat, the Star reported. He concluded that the lifeboat must have been wrenched from its davits by the waves and carried away from the foundering ship before the desperate crew could board. With the ship sinking beneath them, they were left with nothing but their cork lifebelts to save them.

Another ship that was lost was the brand-new, 550-foot freighter Carruthers. The ship’s cook, Mary Agnes Heary, was identified at the funeral home in Goderich by her mother, Agnes Grey of Hamilton, the Star reported. It was Mary’s birthday; she would have been 39. She had sailed with Captain Wright of the Carruthers for all but one of the previous 13 years. Mary had taken to the lakes shortly after her marriage. Her husband had been killed in a railway accident five months after the wedding.

The Pine River Boat Club, 10 kilometres south of Kincardine, remembered the storm on its 50th anniversary. Some of its members lived in Ripley, about 10 kilometres inland. They were frequent visitors to Lake Huron; many would camp there in the summer and ultimately build summer cottages.

The club’s anonymous secretary recorded the recollections of some members. “Those who saw the lake on that Sunday afternoon, Nov. 9, 1913, best described it as boiling with 40-foot waves,” the scribe wrote. “What a wild, terrifying sight: The charging waves, the howling winds and the swirling snow . . .

“A few days later, bodies washed ashore and were brought into Ripley. They were laid out in the funeral parlour operated by Ripley’s undertaker, the late John B. Martyn. It was located just east of the Golden Glow, in the building now owned by Harold and Elmer Courtney.

“There were either 10 or 11 bodies in all. Mr. Martyn had the parlour open, and the public could view them. Among them were the captain, the chief engineer and the cook. The cook was a lady, attractive. Her long black hair which had come down in the water reached to her waist. Still on her wrist was her watch. A man who viewed the bodies said all had rosy complexions, possibly due to exposure in the cold water.

“The bodies were loaded in a tall delivery wagon and driven to Goderich by the late John Fowler (father of Mrs. George Ferris) and Billy Ferris.”

Many bodies were never identified. Newspapers published lists of the unidentified with their descriptions, like this one in the Detroit Free Press:

“No. 7 — An officer, full face with red moustache partly bald on the front part of his head. Had gold watch, locket with monogram H.W.H. Inside the locket was the picture of dark woman and baby. Also $100.”

Collingwood was among the places that paid the highest human toll. As a shipbuilding centre, it was natural place for vessels to recruit crews. More than 40 men from the town were feared dead, the Star reported on Nov. 14. Eighteen were on the freighter Leafield, which sank in Lake Superior.

“Hardly a family in town is without a son, a father or a relative in the crews of the lost vessel,” the Star reported. “On street corners little knots gather, discussing the tragedy in hushed whispers.”

Even the small comfort of sharing their grief was denied to many townsfolk: “To add to the trouble smallpox quarantine has been declared, and the town is closed up. Even church services have been prohibited by the health officers. A public funeral for the wreck victims is out of the question . . . Mrs. Charles Gordon, whose son Orrin was wheelsman on the Wexford, is in quarantine and will not be allowed to see her son’s body.”

On Lake Erie, searchers looked vainly for bodies from a sunken lightship — a floating lighthouse — near Buffalo. None had come ashore by Nov. 13, the Chicago Record-Herald reported, but a piece of wood had washed up near Buffalo inscribed with a message.

A memorial service for the dead was held in Goderich, which had become the clearing house for identifying the bodies, on Nov. 16.

The Goderich Signal carried a long account of the ecumenical service, with the sermon delivered by J.B. Fotheringham, rector of St. George’s Church.

“It has been our fate to walk along the shore of Lake Huron and see the results of the winds . . . and there we have picked up the bodies of those who have perished in this awful storm,” Fotheringham said.

“In consequence many a bewildered mother with her child will walk through this world alone. This day we gather within the house of Our God, we mourn for them.

“We believe in a world of order, but when we see the forces of nature, which to the observing eye almost seem to be uncontrollable, we for a time are apt to cry: Where is the God who rules?”

Following the service, a procession carried five bodies — unidentified and unclaimed — to the Maitland Cemetery, just outside the town.

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